When it comes to domain names, every letter counts

Tonight I saw someone post a domain name on Twitter, talking about how it would be perfect for a brand in the niche it refers to. I’m not going to mention the domain in my post because I don’t want to single-out or mess up any SEO for this domain name later down the road. So in it’s place I’ll use a fictitious example.

Let’s suppose you own the domain name – Freshotels.com. You think, hey – anyone that wants to brand on the term “Fresh Hotels” should buy my domain. However, the challenge is – you’re missing a letter, and while you could confuse this domain with FreshHotels.com, it’s missing the “h”

With domain names, every letter counts. Suppose you’re a business owner, in the hotel space, and you have some pretty fresh hotels, you decide, you know what – I’m going to call my business Fresh Hotels, chances are you’re going to want to buy the exact-match .COM, which would be FreshHotels.com.

At the same time, yes – you might want to buy typos of your brand name, so FresHotels.com would be one you might want to pickup as a defensive registration, but it’s not likely going to be your brand name. The point I was making on Twitter tonight is the person who was tweeting about his domain had the variant of his name that would match to FresHotels.com, it was a typo of the exact-match of the brand someone would want.

I think it’s a good idea for brands to have typos and variations of their names, it never hurts to keep that out of the hands of someone else, but I do strongly believe that everyone should own their exact-match brand name. Having your exact-match brand name, minus one letter, gets you so close, but yet so far.

Or at least that’s my two cents. What do you think? Is it okay to own your brand name minus one letter or do you need to own the exact-match?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton